1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus, a control method therefor, and a control program for implementing the control method, and in particular, to an image pickup apparatus provided with a function of storing image data and retrieving desired image data from the stored image data, a control method therefor, and a control program for implementing the control method.
2. Description of the Related Art
There have been conventionally known image pickup apparatuses provided with a function of storing image data of a shot image in a storage device and retrieving desired image data from the image data stored in the storage device. For example, there has been proposed an electronic still camera capable of retrieving desired image data from image data stored in a storage device, using a picture image input by drawing, as a search key image (refer to, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2000-076302). In this electronic still camera, a searching process is carried out by inputting by drawing a picture-image characteristic of desired image data to the electronic still camera, and sequentially comparing the inputted picture image with a plurality of image data stored in the storage device to retrieve image data, which has a high degree of similarity with the inputted picture image, from the plurality of image date stored in the storage device, as a search result image.
In the conventional electronic still camera, however, when an interruption process such as shooting, data communication, replacement of a memory card, switching of a shooting mode, replacement of a battery, a cross key operation is carried out during the searching process, the user is required to press a search interruption button to interrupt the searching process and then start the above-mentioned interruption process. Therefore, the user feels troublesome to carry out the operation. In particular, when the user shoots during the searching process, the user has to press the search interruption button to interrupt the searching process and then press a shutter button to start shooting. Consequently, the user might miss a shutter chance.
Moreover, when a working memory is shared by the searching process and the interruption process, if the user does not manually store a search key image and a search result image in another storage device before the user interrupts the searching process, after the interruption process is terminated, the user has to again input the search key image and the search result image to carry out the searching process again from the onset.